NBA Basketball: Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 10:30 pm (Rose Garden)

TV:

Two heavyweights collide on Thursday night as the Portland Trail Blazers play host to the Houston Rockets on TNT.

Head to head, the Rockets are 3-0-1 ATS in the last 4 meetings and 5-0-1 ATS in the last 6 meetings in Portland while the underdog is 7-2-1 ATS in the last 10 meetings and the road team is 5-1-1 ATS in the last 7 meetings. The Trail Blazers are 4-1 ATS in their last 5 home games and 16-5 ATS in their last 21 games overall, but just 3-8 ATS in their last 11 games vs. a team with a winning % above .600. The Rockets on the other hand are 4-1 ATS in their last 5 vs. NBA Northwest and 9-4 ATS in their last 13 games overall.

Craig Mitchelldyer-USA TODAY Spo

The Portland Trail Blazers come into tonight’s showdown having dropped just four of their first 22 games of the season, which no one in their wildest dreams would have predicted at the start of the season. However, one of those defeats came at the hands of tonight’s opponent in the Houston Rockets as they ran away with a 116-101 victory back at the start of November at the Rose Garden. In fact, the Rockets have now defeated Portland in their last three meetings and the final score in each were all pretty much identical as they read like this: Houston 116 – Portland 101, Houston 116 – Portland 98 and Houston 118 – Portland 103. Not to mention the last two meetings were also in Portland.

As far as current form goes, the Trail Blazers bounced back from their home loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night by winning in Utah 105-94 and improved to 9-2 against the spread in their 11 road games to date. Meanwhile, Houston suffered back-to-back losses at Utah and at home to Phoenix recently, however, they bounced back with consecutive double-digit home wins over Orlando and Golden State this week.

I loved Portland coming into the season and I still love them now, but I can’t ignore the fact that the Rockets have defeated them in their last three meetings all by over 15 points apiece. The Trail Blazers are coming off a home loss and they are 9-2 at the Rose Garden this season, so you would expect a bounce back performance out of them tonight, but I just think they are a bad matchup against the Rockets. Houston has only played the three home games since the 2nd of the month so they should be well rested and prepared for tonight’s showdown. If anything, I think this is going to be a close game so the points look like the way to go....

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